Larry Culp may not be an engineer, but if you want someone who can take a storied American manufacturer that got infected with MBA bs and brought it back to its roots … I mean he’s the only one whose done it, right?
What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane
211–220 of 568 posts
Re: What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
"the lengths to which they went to ensure all prior institutional knowledge regarding how to properly build a plane was systematically destroyed." why do this intentionally?
Stock price gains. Fire all the longest-tenured, highest-salaried employees. Now you have a company that appears to look similar but with millions of dollars fewer per year in headcount expenses. Boeing's stock price went up 10x in the time frame covered by the article. The people responsible for gutting the company have cashed out.
> millions of dollars fewer per year in headcount expenses.
I don't know how much they saved by forcing out highly-paid employees, but it was a tiny amount compared to the 40 billion in additional revenue earned between 2008 and 2018 (60 to 101 billion). The stock market rewarded the company primarily because of the revenue gains.
Re: What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane
#213> Swampy believed relying on mechanics to self-inspect their work was not only insane but illegal This sounds like the changes that have taken place in the software industry in the past 10-20 years. Engineers are meant to do much more than engineering, including testing their own software, managing project timelines, etc., however with software nobody dies, you just get crappy software that constantly breaks and need…
> however with software nobody dies
Software that runs systems which can directly kill people does tend to get a lot of scrutiny, but there is also a lot of software which can indirectly kill someone that doesn’t get the same level of attention
https://www.technologydecisions.com.au/content/convergence/a...
Re: What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
The entire first half of this (tfp directly above this comment) article blindly supports the spin that there is some conspiracy where someone killed him. HIs own family goes into great detail all over the press about how he had anxiety and ptsd. That he quit his job on DR orders or the stress was going to give him a heart attack. The shit Boeing did to him was awful (stress, anxiety and ptsd) and Boeing should be bla…
You say it like "anxiety" and "stress" are synonymous to suicidal. I am a pretty anxious person, and sometimes have a lot of stress at work, and experienced burnout in the past too. That doesn't mean I am about to shoot myself in a motel parking lot - or anywhere else, for that matter. This binary view of mental health - either a person is "healthy" which means 100% perfect, or he's not - and then anything can be exp…
His whole lawsuit was about being forced to retire 10 years early because Boeing forced him out for whistleblowing.
Thats whistleblowing as in past tense. He complained to the FAA and the FAA said 'yes John you're right'.
Not to diminish your mental heath but the whole argument here is that what Boeing around "stress", "pressure" and "anxiety" was far worse.
Its not like is anti whistleblower retaliation case (AIR21) was going to be some massive blemish for Boeing. It's not like it was going to be a 100 million dollar write down. It is basically "wrongful termination" that they are fighting. And it would be round 2 on this case (the first was "dismissed").
https://archive.is/iUzxR#selection-995.134-995.139 does a bit better job of surfacing more of the details. Ones that paint boeing in a far worse light without the sensationalism of a tv script murder plot.
Re: What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane
#215> He mocked him in weekly meetings whenever he dared contribute a thought, assigned a fellow manager to spy on him and spread rumors that he did not play nicely with others, and disciplined him for things like “using email to communicate” and pushing for flaws he found on planes to be fixed. Sounds like a regular middle manager in any tech company. Sad unfortunate effect of the power asymmetries in corporate structur…
Apart from pushing someone out who they don’t wanna pay severance for, what incentive does a manager have to treat one of their reports like dirt?
Sociopathy...
Re: What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
Stock price gains. Fire all the longest-tenured, highest-salaried employees. Now you have a company that appears to look similar but with millions of dollars fewer per year in headcount expenses. Boeing's stock price went up 10x in the time frame covered by the article. The people responsible for gutting the company have cashed out.
>Boeing's stock price went up 10x in the time frame covered by the article. The people responsible for gutting the company have cashed out. Why does the stock market reward idiot shit like this? I've seen the same whit a a large US semiconductor company. In the 2008 crunch, the fired the most tenured employees and offshored the work abroad. Granted, the company didn't fail, their stock went up and now it's 5-7x that…
> Why does the stock market reward idiot shit like this?
Because Boeing boosted revenue from $60 to 101 billion during the time frame. And had just a single competitor.
The current stock price is less than half of its 2019 peak.
Re: What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane
#217I am not exaggerating to say that Jim McNerney should be dragged in front of Congress and be forced to explain what he did to an incredibly important American company. It's important to push back against the shareholder value theory where appropriate and humiliation is an underrated component of that.
The entire neoliberal ideology needs to be reevaluated at every level of business in this country. We're destroying our skilled labor forces and our economy to pursue short term gains and it's going to have a negative impact on our national security.
Re: What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane
#218Tremendously detailed for how short it is. I struggle to understand how outsourcing the engineer was sold as good for shareholders. Anyone watching someone write a longer book on this publicly?
It's not about being good for shareholders. They are far away and generally know nothing about what is good or bad decision in long run. We have replaced human QC with computers in many industries. C-suite cares about company profit, middle management cares about KPI.
It's about maximizing individual management KPI despite being wrong for a company as a whole. Problems are for other guys/gals down the line.
Re: What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
A billion dollars here, a billion dollars there, pretty soon someone needs to be taken out of the picture.
What billions of dollars. The man had already been on film. He already has written statements everywhere. The FAA already agreed that what he said had happened. He was in court for AIR21 case... to get money out of boeing for himself, for 10 years of early retirement. Candidly Boeing was probably paying more for the lawyers they were using to fight him than they would have paid just settling. There weren't billons on…
The reason you don’t settle is to discourage others from doing the same thing. It would also be the reason to ‘suicide’ someone even if they were not costing you much money.
Re: What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you are selecting for anything besides competence, your chances of getting competence is effectively random. It says nothing about one group of people being more or less competent than another. I have observed that selecting for competence leads to diversity, and I believe that diversity is a strength. But it is best achieved organically. Personally I think the shortcomings we have with achieving diversity is in t…
Can you speak more about the framing? I think diversity should be encouraged, but I also believe to some extent that people of color have been left out of STEM education and jobs due to poor education and opportunities. Maybe a middle ground is to hire for both. Bring in women, people of color, and others who may not be as educated or experienced, but make a serious effort to pair them with more experienced employees…
I think you are right about starting early in education and exposing disadvantaged children to things they wouldn't otherwise have available to them, and supporting them throughout their education. This would benefit organizations that want to achieve good performance and is worth them investing in themselves, although government support is a decent second option that I agree with. However it's important to note that this is primarily an economic differentiation, not a racial one.
Training can help but it is not sufficient for many tasks. You also need aptitude and desire.
Culture is more about what is valued and rewarded in a society, and I think the primary driver of the desire component.
What I meant about framing was that our economies, governments and businesses are framed in a cultural context, anglo-protestant american capitalism in this case. African-american/black communities have a challenging relationship with this for obvious reasons. Certain immigrant populations can integrate or interoperate more effectively than others. I think the key to achieving better results as a society and a planet is to incorporate more cultural diversity, allowing a broader range of desires and outcomes to be seen as valid and worth pursuing. I'm sorry I don't have more time to go into this right now, I hope it gives an idea what I was referring to.